Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Prak]

The usual answer- NPCs aren't controlled by players who see all power increases as varying degrees of "a good thing," and are meant to model people who have worldly concerns like "bring in the harvest, feed my kids, have my soul accepted by Pelor when I die" who would object to a hairy guy coming up and saying "Hey mac, wanna be a werewolf?"

[spongeknight]

The usual answer- NPCs aren't controlled by players who see all power increases as varying degrees of "a good thing," and are meant to model people who have worldly concerns like "bring in the harvest, feed my kids, have my soul accepted by Pelor when I die" who would object to a hairy guy coming up and saying "Hey mac, wanna be a werewolf?"

That doesn't answer anything though. What farmer wouldn't want a huge increase to strength that will help them plow easier, dexterity to help them plant better, and constitution to help them live longer? They can resume human form whenever they're not actually working if they're worried about looking sexy, and obviously Pelor does not give a shit what your race is as long as your alignment reads "Good." Plus, becoming a werebear just straight up lets you maul any orcs or goblins that come raiding your village, which is better than dying when that happens.

[maglag]

The usual answer- NPCs aren't controlled by players who see all power increases as varying degrees of "a good thing," and are meant to model people who have worldly concerns like "bring in the harvest, feed my kids, have my soul accepted by Pelor when I die" who would object to a hairy guy coming up and saying "Hey mac, wanna be a werewolf?"

That doesn't answer anything though. What farmer wouldn't want a huge increase to strength that will help them plow easier, dexterity to help them plant better, and constitution to help them live longer? They can resume human form whenever they're not actually working if they're worried about looking sexy, and obviously Pelor does not give a shit what your race is as long as your alignment reads "Good." Plus, becoming a werebear just straight up lets you maul any orcs or goblins that come raiding your village, which is better than dying when that happens.

Don't forget the regen/silver, which means falling over a cliff or being caught in a fire or something big and heavy crashing over your head become minor incoveniences instead of lethal accidents.

And the homebrew template in question lets you benefit from the ability/skill boosts and regen in both forms, so you don't even need to look like a furry when working the fields, and should actually give you an edge impressing the ladies!

[Prak]

The usual answer- NPCs aren't controlled by players who see all power increases as varying degrees of "a good thing," and are meant to model people who have worldly concerns like "bring in the harvest, feed my kids, have my soul accepted by Pelor when I die" who would object to a hairy guy coming up and saying "Hey mac, wanna be a werewolf?"

That doesn't answer anything though. What farmer wouldn't want a huge increase to strength that will help them plow easier, dexterity to help them plant better, and constitution to help them live longer? They can resume human form whenever they're not actually working if they're worried about looking sexy, and obviously Pelor does not give a shit what your race is as long as your alignment reads "Good." Plus, becoming a werebear just straight up lets you maul any orcs or goblins that come raiding your village, which is better than dying when that happens.

I didn't say the farmers were smart. The reasons npcs don't line up to be turned into sexy wolf men is because npcs think that to become a werewolf is to become evil and damned. And monstrous.

Whether they're right or not doesn't matter, the simple fact that they have in-game beliefs which don't center on "being harder to kill and better at killing."

The real question is why wouldn't every pc be a lycanthrope?

[maglag]

The usual answer- NPCs aren't controlled by players who see all power increases as varying degrees of "a good thing," and are meant to model people who have worldly concerns like "bring in the harvest, feed my kids, have my soul accepted by Pelor when I die" who would object to a hairy guy coming up and saying "Hey mac, wanna be a werewolf?"

That doesn't answer anything though. What farmer wouldn't want a huge increase to strength that will help them plow easier, dexterity to help them plant better, and constitution to help them live longer? They can resume human form whenever they're not actually working if they're worried about looking sexy, and obviously Pelor does not give a shit what your race is as long as your alignment reads "Good." Plus, becoming a werebear just straight up lets you maul any orcs or goblins that come raiding your village, which is better than dying when that happens.

I didn't say the farmers were smart. The reasons npcs don't line up to be turned into sexy wolf men is because npcs think that to become a werewolf is to become evil and damned. And monstrous.

Whether they're right or not doesn't matter, the simple fact that they have in-game beliefs which don't center on "being harder to kill and better at killing."

The real question is why wouldn't every pc be a lycanthrope?

Why would all lychantropes be considered evil and damned? Werebears in particular are considered champions of good last time I checked. Pelor only has a burning rage for the undead, I don't recall any D&D deity that condemns furries. Only that silver church from Eberron that takes orders from a sealed demon. And even then the other Eberron churches condemn that hate.

Meanwhile orcs/bugbears/hobgolins/kobolds, well, those are extremely interested in "being harder to kill and better at killing". Mind you, a peasant would find +4 (+5 when you consider the Wis boost) to stuff like handle animal quite nice.

As for why wouldn't every pc wanna be a lychantrope, that's what I'm asking to the creator of the template that did not include any LA/CR change, meaning it's basically a free power up and the PCs would indeed want to grab it as soon as possible.

[Chamomile]

Some number of NPCs will see the advantages of being a werewolf and take the option, regardless of social consequences. These NPCs will be significantly more survivable than those who do not, and their slice of the overall demographic pie will increase by somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-10% (not percentage points, but percent) every generation. If the neighbors get together and try to kill them, in most cases this will only hasten the demographic dominance of the werewolf population, because the guys fighting with torches and pitchforks will lose to the guys who can turn into furry blenders in a big way. Even the ones who successfully wipe out the local werewolf population will be tipping things in the werewolves' favor overall, because their pyrrhic victory will cause far more drastic reductions in their own population compared to the werewolves in an absolute sense, which means that on a regional level, rather than a village-for-village level, the balance will have tipped to the werewolves even stronger. Once the werewolves reach majority demographic, the belief in werewolves as evil and damned will rapidly wither.

Exactly how long all this takes depends on your initial population of werewolves, and what stage of the process your campaign world is in will depend on how long werewolves have been a thing.

[K]

I feel like point-buy is one of those holy grails that constantly trip up designers because the idea is fundamentally unworkable, but dangles the promise of the ability to do the one thing that players crave the most: the ability to generate new playable content.

Historically, games that offer design advice or systems have been shit. Almost all fall back on "just eyeball it" and the rest rely on complexity to mask failure in either actual content-generation ability or basic ideas of balance.

The real question is: "Do you want the ability to generate content, or do you want to chase the grail?"

If you want to generate content, you can use some kind of level-type system to balance various incomparables against each other and offer an amazing amount of customization.

PS. If you are tempted by a hybrid approach between level and point-based, look to White Wolf games for a prime example of the failure points.

[OgreBattle]

If you want to generate content, you can use some kind of level-type system to balance various incomparables against each other and offer an amazing amount of customization.

Classsplosion then?

PS. If you are tempted by a hybrid approach between level and point-based, look to White Wolf games for a prime example of the failure points.

Are there any tRPG's where character creation is point buy but then advancement is level based? Like you assign various points to your skills and abilities, then when you reach level 2 you add +1 to your skills and get a feat to spend.

[Username17]

Are there any tRPG's where character creation is point buy but then advancement is level based?

Disgaea.

Speaking of Disgaea, that brings up a problem with level based advancement in general: experts. If you are not playing Disgaea, it's pretty fucking weird for the Emperor's trade minister to be able to punch out an Ogre or hold off twenty soldiers with a sword. There is a genuine need for characters in the world to be good at things without necessarily being good at adventuring. That is difficult to arrange in a pure level-based system.

And then there's the issue of player characters being good at things. If the players can hire a scribe, a lawyer, a blacksmith or bqhatevwr, then it really shouldn't be a game balance issue for the player characters to be able to do those things personally.

What that says to me is that the ideal for a game like D&D would be to have a point system in parallel to a level system, where the point system let you buy shit like languages. Like Secondary skills, but less shit.

-Username17

[Mechalich]

Perhaps a parallel system based around time spent? If expertise in crafting/diplomacy/knowledges/etc. is based around how much time (adjusted by ability modifiers or whatever to allow for young experts) has been invested into building experience, then PCs could develop their secondary abilities during downtime. There would be trade-offs between splitting time across multiple abilities or focusing on one thing, and it would reward long-running campaigns (and if you did it right, you could also use it as a reward for just showing up to the game that wasn't destabilizing in the way rewarding XP only to those present can be).

The mechanic that specifically comes to mind is crafting in many MMOs, which often doesn't actually require a player to do anything requiring actual skill or risk-taking, but it does require you to be logged in a lot.

Also, I think it makes a great deal of sense to separate skills that are necessary to adventuring (like spot and its equivalents) from skills that might occasionally be helpful while adventuring but are more useful for running the kingdom or earning a living. The former should really be part of core class abilities while the latter should use a parallel system.

[maglag]

Are there any tRPG's where character creation is point buy but then advancement is level based?

Disgaea.

Can anyone elaborate on that? I only played the first Disgaea, and I recall Point Buy only, well, being like D&D point buy already is where it decides your base stats and then you had a class that decided your actual abilities and leveled up.

Speaking of Disgaea, that brings up a problem with level based advancement in general: experts. If you are not playing Disgaea, it's pretty fucking weird for the Emperor's trade minister to be able to punch out an Ogre or hold off twenty soldiers with a sword. There is a genuine need for characters in the world to be good at things without necessarily being good at adventuring. That is difficult to arrange in a pure level-based system.

But it is necessary if you want party balance. If one of the players can tank 20 guards, and another drops when a nameles soldier stares at him too hard, designing encounters becomes an headache.

Plus hey, plenty of settings where people who are good, are good, and the head librarian will knock your shit out by bludgeoning you with books if you make too much noise.

And that explains why the characters can't just murderize the top shopkeeper/blacksmith for their goods. If that NPC is the best shopkeeper/blacksmith, then you know they can hold their ground.

Otherwise you're rewarding the party for becoming slave masters with retinues of fragile NPCs with lewt skillz who can't defend themselves and serve out of pure fear for their lives.

[Leress]

Can anyone elaborate on that? I only played the first Disgaea, and I recall Point Buy only, well, being like D&D point buy already is where it decides your base stats and then you had a class that decided your actual abilities and leveled up.

Well your class didn't really give you many abilities unless you were a caster. Most abilities were obtained by you weapon mastery level and any that you learned from your apprentice through "Extra Gain"

Later Disgaeas changed this a bit with one spending mana to get abilities as well as leveling them up. They also added Evilites that made each Class/Monster unique. Of course they added a way for others to get those Eviites through the Character World.

Really the points given during character creation matter very little, what matter what Innocents were on your equipment.

*side note I am still disappointed that Netherworld Unbound never came to the west and pretty much became a dumped project.

[Koumei]

Those three points for a basic character mean little, but the crazy way the numbers scale up as you level, if you reincarnate someone with 100 extra points to spend and shove them all in Attack, then they very quickly level up into someone who murders mountains.

Arguably, you choose your weapon at creation: levelling up weapon XP for new abilities takes ages, so for all practical purposes, the one you start with is the one you stick with. So "Choose your weapon at the start. That skillset then levels up" is sort of accurate as statements go.

And apparently maglag only plays with people with ASPD.

[Mord]

Are there any tRPG's where character creation is point buy but then advancement is level based? Like you assign various points to your skills and abilities, then when you reach level 2 you add +1 to your skills and get a feat to spend.

Dark Heresy might or might not fit your criteria, depending on how you feel about the XP expenditure options within each tier.

[Username17]

But it is necessary if you want party balance. If one of the players can tank 20 guards, and another drops when a nameles soldier stares at him too hard, designing encounters becomes an headache.

Only if combats take a lot of time and are a major portion of an evening. If combats resolve quickly and are a minor issue that one character is expected to solve, then it's OK if only one character is good at it.

Every character needs a certain minimal competence in activities where a character's failure to contribute derails the game or leaves the player sitting out most of the evening with little spotlight time. In D&D that includes Combat. In Vampire that includes Social Posturing. In a hypothetical Harvest Moon RPG that could include watering plants. In a hypothetical Josie and the Pussycats RPG that could include rocking out.

The needs and conceits of the game and the stories it is trying to tell determine what everyone needs to be able to do and what needs to be doable by one of the characters in the game. About the only thing that I think is epistemically required to be doable to some degree by every character on the team is sneaking. Since it's deeply weird if one character failing to be sneaky doesn't screw the pooch for the team. I mean, there are games that allow one character to sneak for the whole team, but it feels bizarre.

-Username17

[Wiseman]

Is there any reason to play a Shujenja instead of a refluffed Cleric, or a Wu Jen instead of a refluffed Wizard?

[Mistborn]

Is there any reason to play a Shujenja instead of a refluffed Cleric, or a Wu Jen instead of a refluffed Wizard?

IIRC Shujenja's can get some spells from the wizard list that are otherwise hard to snag as a cleric. Wu Jen on the other hand have their own bullshit spell list with some spells no other class gets, I have no idea if those spells worth it and given that I've never even heard of someone playing a Wu Jen they probably aren't

[spongeknight]

Is there any reason to play a Shujenja instead of a refluffed Cleric, or a Wu Jen instead of a refluffed Wizard?

If your DM bans wizards and clerics for being too powerful but inexplicably allows Shugenja and Wu Jen, that's a valid reason to play them. Otherwise no.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Is there any reason to play a Shujenja instead of a refluffed Cleric, or a Wu Jen instead of a refluffed Wizard?

IIRC Shujenja's can get some spells from the wizard list that are otherwise hard to snag as a cleric. Wu Jen on the other hand have their own bullshit spell list with some spells no other class gets, I have no idea if those spells worth it and given that I've never even heard of someone playing a Wu Jen they probably aren't

They gave the decent Wu Jen spells to wizards in 3.5. And even then you still don't take them because they aren't very good.

[Chamomile]

In a hypothetical Josie and the Pussycats RPG that could include rocking out.

How would a sub-system for rocking out work in a hypothetical Josie and the Pussycats RPG?

[Username17]

In a hypothetical Josie and the Pussycats RPG that could include rocking out.

How would a sub-system for rocking out work in a hypothetical Josie and the Pussycats RPG?

Depends on how rules heavy the game ended up being. But I would think that if you wanted to do Josie and the Pussycats you'd want to have "montage scenes" in which characters do things interspersed with rocking out on stage which is not necessarily supposed to be taking place at the same time. So the characters might be being chased around a haunted amusement park or building a house or something and you switch back and forth between describing events related to that activity and actions on stage.

So you'd end up with something that was kind of like Skill Challenges, only hopefully less completely ass. Imagine a resolution system not unlike Ninja Burger. But if your character couldn't do a level appropriate drum solo, the team actions would sort of get kicked in the balls on at least half of your turns regardless of whether the team was fixing a boat or chasing an Aztec mummy through Mardi Gras.

-Username17

[Prak]

I'm thinking about doing a dungeoncrawl bug hunt based on Aliens, and while I could certainly stat out xenomorphs, does anyone know of a creature in the books that would approximate the feel of xenomorphs? Not the look, I know about steel predators and kythons, and they look a lot like xenos, but they function almost nothing like them. I'm looking for the hit-and-run, "adventurer based reproduction" sort of stuff. I'm leaning towards Shadows and Umbral creatures at the moment, with a bit of "they can turn anything into an umbral creature" houseruling.

[Grek]

Xill.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Don't forget Slaad.

[Grek]

Slaad do the implantation thing, but don't do the hit and run thing.